Just Live

Galen Strawson | Dublin Review Of Books | 1st February 2024 | U

What is the meaning of life? Centuries of answers to this question suggest that life, existence, itself, is the source of that meaning. "All experience of Meaning, meaning in life, lies in the quality of experience in the present moment. Certainly you can enjoy thinking narratively about yourself; that’s one thing you can do in the living moment of experience. But there are many other things" (4,700 words)

Inequality Without Class

Simon Torracinta | Dissent | 22nd May 2024 | U

The world has never been more interested in the causes and effects of inequality, yet the economists in this field today "have had strikingly little to contribute beyond the merely observational". The book reviewed here offers some satisfaction away from the "perpetual seesawing" between blaming market or society for the great divide, but does so at the expense of clarity (3,000 words)

Toxic Gaslighting

Sharon Lerner | ProPublica | 20th May 2024

3M, the company of scotch tape and N95 masks, has produced at least 100 million pounds of the chemical PFOS, and has known for decades that it accumulates in humans. Studies have linked PFOS to liver malfunction, increased infectious diseases, and vaccine ineffectiveness. 3M “have not admitted wrong­doing or faced liability for producing forever chemicals or for concealing their harms” (9,000 words)

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Hummingbirds Are Wondrous

Zito Madu | Plough | 17th May 2024

The things we know, and might not know, about hummingbirds: they are the smallest living birds in the world, of which the bee hummingbird is the smallest at two inches. They can fly forward, backward, up, down, and in zigzags. Hummingbird plumage has more colours than all other bird species combined. “They seem as if they were made in an instant, a spark of genius from an extravagant god” (2,200 words)

Golden Girls

Eman Naseer | Vestoj | 17th May 2024

On the eve of Partition, Nusrat, the author’s great-grandmother, hid all her gold in a makeshift utility belt sewn around her pregnant belly, and took her six children on a perilous journey to Lahore amid looting, pillaging mobs. Eventually, this jewellery was passed down to her daughters and granddaughters — an enduring practice among South Asian women, who own over 11% of the world's gold today (2,200 words)

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Little Seed: A Field Guide To Grieving

Wei Tchou | Virginia Quarterly Review | 14th May 2024

“At the time of my brother’s first psychotic break, I knew nothing about ferns but that I had one and it was dying. The Victorians believed that ferns were a blessing of courage. Modern interpretations are more foreboding. To dream of tracing the fronds of a fern, winding through their fractal divisions, their obsessive symmetry, can indicate a deadening of pleasure: anxiety, a premonition of illness” (8,400 words)

Podcast: City Gone Crazy | Let The Kids Dance!. Beginning of a series about Seattle’s "Teen Dance Ordinance", a controversial law that between 1985 and 2002 made it very difficult and expensive to legally host a concert or dance for those aged under 21. The effect on teen culture and counterculture in the city was profound (41m 32s)

Video: Come Again By John Dowland | YouTube | Daniel Keene | 2m 45s

A tenor and a luthier perform John Dowland's secretly rather saucy song from 1597. The control and musicianship on display in this recital is wonderful to see — it feels like the nearest thing to time travel that music can offer.

Rushdie, Khomeini And Me

Amir Ahmadi Arian | London Review Of Books | 15th May 2024

“To ordinary people in Iran, the fatwa came out of nowhere. The country had just emerged from the Iran-Iraq War. The 86-year-old Khomeini was close to death. No one had the time to worry about a novel. On 13 February 1989, two British Muslim activists, Kalim and Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, ran into Khatami, Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The fatwa was issued the next day” (3,200 words)

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How to discover and consume 6,500+ podcast episodes without subscribing to any podcasts? Wenbin Fang shares his episode-centric listening approach with Listen Notes.

The Natural Selection Of Bad Vibes

Kevin Dorst | Stranger Apologies | 11th May 2024

There is a reason for the perennial gap between pessimistic public discourse and the “chart-wielding optimists” who claim things are better than ever. People — rationally — tend to focus conversations on solving problems, with the unintended side effect of excess pessimism, even when times are largely good. As the information age multiplies the number of conversation topics, excess pessimism would increase (2,400 words)

‘Plague’ Comes Before The Fall

Colin Elliott | Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists | 15th May 2024

Estimates for the death toll of the 166AD Antonine plague range between 2 per cent and 35 per cent. We haven't identified the pathogen or the symptoms. We do, however, know that increased storm activity the previous decade altered the Nile, which reduced the grain harvest, so that malnourished Roman bodies were more susceptible to sickness. Historical science is a capricious discipline (1,900 words)

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Science Stories With a Human Touch. Nautilus explores the biggest ideas in science through the lens of humanity. Discover the stories behind the science and how it ripples through our lives and culture in the Nautilus newsletter.

The Raw Milk Black Market

Nicholas Florko | Stat News | 15th May 2024

It is illegal in the US to ship unpasteurised milk between states. Yet the FDA does not seem to enforce the ban, even though tests have found genetic traces of bird flu viruses in 20 per cent of samples. Raw milk fans believe in health benefits the government is trying to keep from them. This reporter is easily able to buy a half-gallon via what feels like "the world’s weirdest drug deal" (1,700 words)

On English Melancholy

Iris Moon | MIT Press Reader | 9th May 2024

Brief, discursive history of melancholy. In antiquity, it was associated with Saturn, that “ancient devourer of children”. Aristotle believed that the thoughtful ones — poets, artists, philosophers — himself included, were more susceptible. This idea continued into the 17th century: “ponderous thinking” was said to induce melancholy and “commerce with others” was offered as a potential cure (1,400 words)

The Ambling Mind

L.M. Sacasas | Convivial Society | 9th May 2024

Meditations on the virtues of walking. Kierkegaard “walked himself into a state of well-being”; Nietzsche felt that “all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking”. Travel writer Nick Hunt, reflecting on his walk from the Netherlands to Istanbul, noted that walking turned the world into a continuum. “One thing merges into the next: cultures are not separate things but points along a spectrum” (1,800 words)

Dear Tim Cook

Matt Zoller Seitz | Roger Ebert | 8th May 2024

Outpouring of pure rage about an Apple marketing campaign that depicts a huge press crushing a pile of traditional "creative" objects, such as musical instruments, paints and cameras. The company has now apologised for it. Is this just a harmless piece of imagery to sell a tablet, or a message to artists that "the tech industry will crush you, destroy you; suddenly, violently, all at once"? (1,800 words)

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What Can A Person Wear?

Patricia Marino | The Kramer Is Now | 10th May 2024

Philosopher ponders whether it is possible to dress both ethically and comfortably. Stretchy manmade fabrics are practical, but their plastic fibres "pollute everything from oceans to breast milk". Natural options like cotton use a lot of water and energy to produce, and don't stretch or wash well. "I could dress more sustainably by buying and wearing used, shapeless items, and not looking good" (750 words)

A Record Of Old Kashgar

Henryk Szadziewski | China Review Of Books | 9th May 2024

Kashgar sits at the far west of China, near Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Home to the Uyghur people, this ancient city has seen many kingdoms and enterprises come and go. It became a trading hub because of the influence of the Silk Road. Now, the CCP is "feverishly attempting to score a mark of their permanence onto the fabric of the city" via systematic demolition of ancient buildings (1,700 words)

Big Fridge

Patrick Sisson | Sherwood | 2nd May 2024

Refrigerated warehouses, some as cold as minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, have completely revolutionised how we eat. They enable seasonal foods to be available all year round and give fresh staples a longer shelf life at home. There is at least 7.4 billion cubic feet of refrigerated industrial space worldwide, over half of which is in the US. In a climate crisis, cold storage is a very hot market (1,400 words)

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Not Lost In A Book

Dan Kois | Slate | 5th May 2024

Sales of books aimed at children aged eight to twelve are in "free fall". This "decline by nine" means that only 35 per cent of this age group read for fun. Some fear this will harm "the entire concept of pleasure reading as a common pursuit". The causes? The pandemic, screen time, bad teaching, too many illustrated books, but also the fact that these kids don't have phones yet (1,700 words)

Becoming An Amateur Polyglot

ArisAlexis | LessWrong | 8th May 2024

It is best if one's first new language is taught by an experienced teacher. After that, it is possible to make good progress alone with spaced repetition, grammar texts and apps. Don't try to learn more than four tenses. Don't worry about the gender of nouns. Watch TV in your new language, with subtitles at first, and use a Kindle to read books. Best of all, talk to friends without switching (1,900 words)